A woman raped and tortured for six years by a Manhattan superintendent who hired her to clean apartments in a building he managed slammed the ex-boss as a “horrible monster” ahead of his sentencing Monday to 22 years in prison.
“He broke me into a thousand pieces. He abused me sexually,” the victim said during an emotional impact statement in Manhattan Criminal Court. “I was tortured. I suffered alone in silence for a long time. This is my worst nightmare.”
Officials said Jose Espinoza, 63, coerced the woman into having sex for money — sometimes in front of her special needs daughter — if she agreed to clean apartments in the Flatiron building where he was the super.
Within a year, prosecutors said, Espinoza began beating the woman, tracking her phone and ripping up her passports in a terrorizing bid to control her movements.
“He made me suffer for no reason at all, this bastard,” she said. ”He hit me so hard. He left me almost dead. Bleeding, naked. And I thought, ‘Thank God he left me alone’. This torture would go on for hours, days, weeks or months. He would just look at me and laugh. He messed with my family and my daughter, my little innocent girl, and my sister, just out of pure evil.”
Espinoza was also accused of blackmailing the woman into silence by demanding nude photographs of her daughter, and threatening to share the images if the woman “ever defied his orders,” officials said.
The torture finally ended in the spring of 2022 when the victim, who was undergoing treatment for breast cancer at a Manhattan hospital, confided in a social worker, who then alerted authorities.
Espinoza was arrested by the NYPD Human Trafficking Squad. He was convicted last month by a Manhattan jury.
The victim, an illegal migrant from Paraguay, thanked prosecutors and jurors, but was too overcome with emotion to finish her statement.
An assistant district attorney picked up where the victim left off after she collapsed in the courtroom.
“He destroyed my life,’ she said in the letter read by the prosecutor. “Don’t be fooled by this monster. He isn’t a human being. He is evil, a demon with a lot of evil inside. He likes to make people suffer, and he enjoys it, and I assure you that he will never change your honor and now your honor because of this bastard, I’m struggling to continue with my life.“
The woman said she was receiving psychiatric treatment for trauma and abuse.
“He stole everything from me, absolutely everything, your honor,” she wrote. “I will never forgive this horrible monster and evil narcissist. Never.”
Judge Felicia Ruiz also sentenced Espinoza to five-to-seven years for labor trafficking. She called the torture “virtual enslavement both for labor purposes and your own sexual gratification.”
On one occasion, Ruiz said, Espinoza forced the victim to have oral and anal sex in front of her autistic daughter. He also abused the woman in the apartment he shared with his wife of 39 years and one of his own daughters, the judge said.
Espinoza stared at the ceiling while the victim spoke. He gave his own statement, and made reference to his “little difficulties.”
“I recognize that I wasn’t always good to her, she trusted me,” Espinoza said. “That’s why I’m really, really sorry. I understand the gravity of these charges. But also I feel bad for the suffering that this situation has caused to my family. They are going through a difficult time because of my little difficulties.”